MONROE, Wash. — Voters turned down a chance to reopen a maternity ward at a Snohomish County hospital. The unit at Evergreen Hospital in Monroe was closed in 2011.
Now hospital leaders face hard decisions on what to do next.
Aaron and his twin sister Maleigha are nearly 2, rambunctious years old. But their mother's pregnancy was high risk and complicated. And she needed close monitoring.
"So our plan was if I was to go in labor here at home, I would have to call 911," said Kortni Burns. "I wouldn't have been able to get into the normal car. I would have immediately had to call 911 and have them deliver me to the hospital."
They would have had to drive from their home in Sultan past the nearest hospital in Monroe because it does not have a working maternity ward. Instead, she delivered her twins in an Everett hospital, more than 20 miles away.
"It just would have been so convenient to be eight miles away from the hospital," Burns said, "versus 40 minutes to an hour and a half depending on traffic."
Scroll down to continue reading
More news from KIRO 7
Renee Jensen runs Monroe's Evergreen Hospital. She is a veteran of rural hospitals, having grown up in Monroe.
When Jensen asked voters in the Skykomish Valley to say yes to a levy increase -- about 20 cents per thousand dollars of property valuation -- she says it was to make this a more vital lifeline for the people here.
The money would have been for "improving our emergency room services," Jensen said, "helping us put in a new CT and MRI, bring baby delivery back to our hospital again and improve our medical records system."
She says they can likely get some bank loans to do much of that updating. But this maternity unit where 450 babies a year were once born is a costly endeavor that needs community support.
She says she doesn't think the vote says it is not important to the community.
"Not really," Jensen said. "I don't think so. I feel like the people that I was able to speak directly to the group...they really understood the need and the reason and were supportive. I just think I have more work to do."
Several things are being stored in the maternity ward, including training equipment. But the people here tell us they will not be content until babies can once again be born here in Monroe.
"I'm not a quitter," Jensen said. "So I want to figure out how we can get this done. And it might just take a little bit more time to get a good solid plan together."
Kortni Burns has five children so she says her child bearing days are over. But she shares Jensen's vision for her community hospital.
"If they're worried about their taxes being raised, imagine how much money they'd be saving because they're not traveling so far with gas," Burns said. "It'd be saving them money in the long run to have something closer."